Babylon
by land of a thousand words
Summary: After the war, Hermione Granger moved to America. A story of departure and return. EWE, one-shot.


"So rest your heart; you're all mine. Because if you walk away, I fall on down." - _Babylon_, Angus & Julia Stone

* * *

><p>After the war, Hermione Granger moved to America. She lingered in New York City for a while, but the stuffy air and crowded streets had started to get to her, so she migrated upstate; bought a rundown old farm house with a decent amount of land attached to it. Sometimes it felt too empty, especially in comparison to the city, but she'd rather have felt a little lonely once in a while than to feel the oppressive weight of all those people bearing down on her every second of every day. After the war ended it didn't take long for Hermione to realize that all she had ever wanted was freedom, in every sense of the word — hence the barn house, its rolling hills, and open pastures.<p>

..

She didn't see either of them for some time. Ron also left for America but instead headed west, for the likes of sun, surf, and sand. Beautiful women in bikinis who wouldn't make him think quite so hard, just for a minute or two — for a few blissful moments without that constant feeling of anxiety that had enveloped Hermione ever since he'd known her. Harry stayed in England; London, to be specific, but he almost made a show of keeping contact with her to a minimum. He wrote out, "Hermione -" about twice a day but never finished, never sent them. He made paper aeroplanes out of the scrap and sent them flying into the fire with a feeling of failure that made him question how he won the war at all.

About 6 months after the 50th (or so) attempt, when he _does_ work up the nerve, he simply ends up going to see her instead of writing a letter that he knows will never do her justice. He gets her address from Neville and flies there; on a plane (_like those paper planes you love so much_). He lands at JFK and takes a bus up to her house, a "Greyhound," where sometimes there's gum stuck to the bottom of your seat and you almost always run the risk of sitting next to someone emitting a less than pleasant aroma. After about 6 blistering hours on a bus with windows that won't open, he arrives at her house, and that pressure he'd felt since the end of the war seemingly sweats itself out of his pores and into the freshest air he's ever inhaled.

..

It's Hermione's favorite time of day, late afternoon, and she's been weeding the garden all day in an attempt to make her life a bit more sustainable. She's wearing a new dress that she found in a thrift store 30 minutes away and there's already dirt lining the bottom that brushes against her knees. The breeze feels amazing against the back of her neck, and when she stands to wipe the thin layer of sweat off of her forehead she sees him — walking down the path to meet her, duffle slung over his shoulder, baggy button down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he's never looked more, dare she say, _beautiful_ (except for that time he leapt from Hagrid's arms, looking healthy, alive, and _not dead_). She runs through the rows of freshly turned dirt, flings her arms around his neck, and feeling tears push behind her eyes she shuts them tight, buries her nose against the side of his neck and breathes.

"You smell awful, Harry," she laughs against his skin, and feels his own sigh of relief in the space between their bodies.

"That's what happens when you're stuck on a stuffy old bus for a few hours." He releases her and feels her hands slide down to grip the tops of his arms, "You gonna invite me in?"

She flushes in that way he can't help but love, and watches as she mutters a quick "come in," before spinning around to run up the steps into the house. It's an old barn house with a wraparound porch. The paint is chipping almost everywhere, but he can hear her talking from the bathroom about how she plans on repainting just as soon as she has the money. He could ask, "Why not use magic?" But he knows why not. It's the same reason he took a plane and a bus just because he couldn't write a stupid letter.

He hears the water shut off and watches her walk calmly back into the kitchen. She sets about making tea and he takes a moment or two to see how she's changed since he saw her last. Hair a little longer, though surprisingly less frizzy, the atmosphere up here must be doing her good. Her skin is as smooth as ever, even though there's patches of dirt everywhere but her hands. She doesn't seem to have gained back any of the weight she lost in the war and he frowns.

"I don't think I'll ever see you _not _making that face, Harry Potter."

He snaps suddenly out of his introspection only to discover an old glass jar filled with sweet-smelling, steaming tea directly under his nose. It smells wonderful, and he tells her so.

"I guess some things don't change after all," she says reminiscently into her own china teacup, "I may technically live in America now but I'll _always_ appreciate a hot cup of tea."

She was right, it was comforting. Even if those little insignificant details about her were different, she was still Hermione — and that was all that mattered.

..

After a few more cups of tea, a tour of the house, and a dumping of Harry's duffel in the guest room, the sun had indeed begun to set, and the stars were already visible from the porch where they had both been sitting, sharing a comfortable silence not unlike those shared on their rarely mentioned Horcrux hunt; after Ron had left and they had run out of words to fill the space that he had left.

"Hermione -" he began, hands clasped tightly together on his lap, although she didn't seem to have heard him, eyes so avidly fixated on the stars as they were.

"You know, I've been here for a few months now, but I've never tired of looking up at the stars," she stood up and he followed her graceful steps towards the edge of the porch, "want to go for a ride?"

A look of confusion must have passed over his face, because she laughed and explained, "I bought an old pick-up truck a few months back, for when I need to ride into town... and sometimes it's nice to drive around at night," she raised her gaze yet again, "and look at the stars."

It seemed that no matter how badly he wanted, or needed to talk to Hermione about why he'd flown and driven an almost absurd amount of miles to come see her, that that particular conversation wasn't going to happen tonight.

"Yeah, Hermione, that sounds brilliant."

Her answering smile is almost worth his unfortunate habit of stubborn avoidance.

..

Hermione never was one to put off today what could be done tomorrow, and they had been silent for so long that her sudden voice in the semi-darkness nearly startled him.

"Not that I'm unhappy you're here," he snorted, and she continued as if uninterrupted, "but what are you doing here Harry?"

"What, a guy can't visit his best friend?"

He said it jokingly but he could tell that it had struck a nerve. They were lying on a scratchy old blanket they had spread out across the back of the truck; there were no street lights, but the moon and stars were bright enough. It was still warm enough to be outside without a sweater, but whenever the wind blew, goosebumps broke out across his sweat-dried skin, and he could smell the intoxicating mixture of dirt, grass, and Hermione's perfume all at once. It was distracting, to say the least.

"A guy can visit his 'best friend,' all he wants," she replied almost coolly, "but half a year requires _some_ explanation don't you think?"

He coughed nervously and pushed himself up by his elbows, looking down at Hermione who had yet to take her eyes off the sky.

"I missed you. That's not so hard to believe is it?"

When her eyes met his, he very nearly looked away, but thought better of it. He had beaten the darkest wizard of their time, after all.

"I don't know," the truck moved slightly as she mirrored his position, "you tell me."

"Hermione -" he was going to finish that damn letter if it took him all night, "I'm sorry—" his words ended on a slight hitch, and she blinked in response, waiting. Always waiting.

"... About everything. I never meant for this to happen."

"Meant for what to happen?"

His elbows were falling asleep.

"I can't feel my arms."

"Excuse me?"

He laughed, "No, I mean, pins and needles? My arm. It's falling asleep."

He sat up and scooted forwards, his legs hanging off the end of the truck, while she sat up, crossed her legs, and leaned against the window of the cab behind them both. He could hear her breathing steadily, and while part of him wished he could look at her directly, he knew that what they were about to discuss would be hard enough as it is, and maybe she was making things a littler easier for him. Maybe.

"I should never have left Hermione, it was the coward's way out... and if I could do it again, I..."

He could practically hear her eyebrow raise in faux shock and awe, "But you can't can you? We can't do any of it again."

"No, I suppose we can't."

The crickets were a fitting soundtrack to the silence that followed, and he could've sworn he heard her give a dry sniff, but there were too many thoughts running through his head to be sure. Their time alone on the hunt, the final battle, Ginny, Ron; it was all so much more of a mess than either of them had anticipated, but he had not handled it nearly as well as he should have.

"I shouldn't have been with Ginny."

She definitely gave an indignant snort that time, and he knew that Hermione loved Ginny dearly, her small bout of indignation was for them both. Ginny was no better off with him than he was with her, and while Hermione had known that Harry was aware of this, and that Ginny had yet to reach the same conclusion, she was under the impression that Harry had not only wronged them both, but Ginny as well.

His nerves were shot, he felt like there was adrenaline rushing out of his toes and he didn't know where to go, and it was as if every word he had ever learned were swimming around in his head and refusing to come together to create proper sentences.

He leapt off the back of the truck and start pacing, making the tall grass brush together, emitting a soft sound to accompany the chirping of the crickets and the softness of her breath.

"It was just... after the war, I thought everything was supposed to _be_ a certain way. You were going to be with Ron, I was going to be with Ginny, and we'd just... Merlin, it sounds so stupid now, but we'd just be a family. Together. Something that I never had," he tugged his hands through his hair and continued, "I thought that if you and I... if we decided to... to be together, it would have ruined all of that, and I couldn't... I couldn't be _responsible_ anymore."

He let out a sigh and stopped, his back to her and his eyes on the sky.

He wasn't sure if he was imagining the tight, choked resonance in her voice, but she cleared her throat and said, "Responsible for what, Harry?"

"Tearing people apart. Tearing... tearing us apart. I couldn't... I didn't want anyone else to suffer at that hands of a decision that I'd made."

"_Harry_."

Her tone was so stern, so full of such shock and disbelief that he was truly afraid of turning around and facing her.

"Harry. Harry Potter, look at me. Right now."

When he did finally gather the courage to face her, he realized that her voice betrayed her physical presence. He noted her weight again; she really hadn't gained any of it back, and her fragile form was drowning in his flannel button-down which she'd thrown on over her dress. Her knees were slightly knobby against the blanket she was kneeling on, and the circles under her eyes were perhaps deep enough to catch the tears that were in danger of falling.

"Any decision that was to be made," she choked out, "would have been _our_ decision. Not yours. It wasn't a war Harry, not anymore. It was just... it was our relationship."

The word "relationship" was forced out almost like it was a petty inconvenience; when spoken in the same instance as "war" it did seem petty. It would to her.

He looked down and tiredly ran a hand over his face, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"If we were to have fallen apart, you wouldn't have had to face it alone. That was the point wasn't it? I would never have left you Harry," she smiled sadly, "I never did."

If there was ever a time he had truly wanted to pitch himself off of the Astronomy Tower, it was now. He had been the one who had walked away. When the smoke had cleared and the battle had been won, and Ginny and Hermione had been unintentionally standing on either side of him in a mock showdown that no one recognized except for him, with Ron and his sister none the wiser, he had had a decision to make, and he had chosen to walk away. Hermione had traveled across the ocean, sure, and he had stayed in England, but the physical distance didn't matter when he had chosen one woman over another over some misguided sense of "rightness."

"And it's kind of ironic isn't it?"

When he looked up at the sound of her cracking voice, he saw a tear or two slide down her cheeks and leave wet tracks amongst the dirt and sweat.

"We ended up falling apart anyway. All of us," she wiped a flannel-covered hand across her face and continued, "Ron in California, you in London, me here. It didn't make the least bit of difference," she sniffed, "maybe we just needed some time. To figure out who we were without each other."

_I don't know who I am without you._ Say it, he thought angrily, say it! The words got stuck in his throat, like a hard candy that a child swallows too excitedly, and he felt like such a coward. You defeated Voldemort? _You_? In that moment, he would have gladly choked.

..

The sound of the rain hitting the tin roof of the barn house offered solace for all of 30 seconds before he remembered the evening before. A warm summer night, the occasional breeze, tear-filled confessions and cowardice culminated in an awkward (to say the least), quiet, unfamiliar silence that pervaded the cab of the truck as they drove back to the house on dark roads. As soon as the engine had shut she was slamming the driver's side door and walking calmly up to the dark house, presumably brushing her teeth and going to bed. He'd sat, fixedly, on the old leather seat for a long time, so long in fact that when he looked at the bedside clock he realized that he'd only been asleep for a few hours, 4 at the most.

When he reluctantly turned his head away from the ceiling to glance out the window, he saw her. Wearing the dress from yesterday, but she wore rain boots this time, and a large denim jacket he could have sworn had once belonged to Ron. She walked up and down the rows she had made yesterday, dress held up between her hand, she used the other to grab straggling weeds. Crookshanks trotted patiently behind her, and he was surprised at himself to have forgotten the cats presence. Like a silent guardian, the animal glanced up at the window and Harry could have sworn he was looking right at him. That cat always did give him the creeps.

He looked away, feeling uncomfortably seen through, and threw the covers up and off. Time to get up.

..

By the time he stepped out of the wet, steamy bathroom an hour later, Hermione was back, sitting in a creaky old rocker with a book in her hands. Surprisingly enough she wasn't actually reading the book, despite it being open on her lap; she was instead staring out the double-doors in the living room which led to a deck that surveyed her garden and the woods beyond. Her hair was damp and she smelled of rain — the clean smell of soap mingled with her own and it was undeniably intoxicating.

As he rubbed a towel over his wet hair he walked up next to her chair and stood silently, staring out at the green trees, even more vivid now with the wetness.

"I'm sorry that this visit wasn't as relaxing as you expected."

He looked down at her voice, and watched as she shut her book and ran her hands lovingly over the cover. It was something she had always done, but it wasn't until now that he realized she seemed to have always done it unknowingly, reflexively. He smiled lightly.

"I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm not sure if it was relaxation."

He saw the corner of her mouth lift up just enough to feel the tension in the room subside slightly, it was a welcome relief.

She stretched her arms and looked up, as if coming out of a daze to say, "Have you had any breakfast yet?"

"No, actually, wasn't too hungry."

She smiled and stood, "Well, hang up that towel in the bathroom and I'll make you something."

Walking into the kitchen he smelled the heat coming from the wood burning stove and it dried out his rain-soaked bones. She put a cast-iron skillet over the top to heat it, and he watched moments later as she poured in a ladle-sized amount of a rich looking batter.

"Pancakes, huh?"

She smiled and watched the batter bubble in the pan, readying itself to be flipped, "I've developed quite a fondness for them."

They were cooked to perfection, and delicious, and he expected nothing less. She made a dozen or so, but only ate one and a half, and he watched with a concerned look on his face as she peeled back the skin of an orange. The citrus stung his nostrils but revived him from his pancake, heat-induced stupor.

"Eating enough?"

She stopped her peeling motion and glanced up at him. Her eyes were especially wide today, as she'd pulled her hair up into a messy bun while cooking and the usual veil that existed between him and her hair was nowhere to be found.

"Yes, Harry," she responded calmly, "you don't need to worry about me."

"I can't help but worry."

He swallowed nervously, but she didn't respond and continued instead to peel the rest of the orange. After the last of the rind had been disposed of, he watched her break it apart and sink her teeth into the waiting fruit; juice dribbled down her chin and he wanted to wipe it off with his thumb. He couldn't help but feel that he'd lost that right, and the gloominess that had surrounded him the night before returned and hung over his head like a cloud.

"I thought maybe I'd take you down to the pond today."

He must have lost track of time for a moment, because when he looked back up she'd finished eating and was waiting for his response.

"Oh. Yeah, that sounds fine."

She nodded affirmatively and stood, "I just need to feed Crookshanks and then we'll go."

..

If the situation weren't so dreadfully depressing, he may have laughed at their trek through the woods. They _were_ beautiful, and thankfully he had almost immediately begun to see that these woods and the woods of England were different; Hermione seemed to think so too, as she walked through these woods like they were her home, not an obstacle to be overcome. They reached the pond in about 10 minutes and stood on a crudely built dock that extended out over the water. He vaguely listened to her go on about how it had been man-made but how there had been natural springs underground that had filled it. The sound of her voice and the ripples from the light rainfall on the surface of the water were mesmerizing, and however rude it was, he spoke without thinking, "I don't know who I am without you."

Her voice stopped abruptly and although she turned to look at him, his gaze remained fixed on the water.

"What did you say?"

He took his hands out of his pockets and clenched his fists. He hadn't been planning on saying anything, really, if anything he had wanted to give it a day or two, give them both time to think, but the rain along with the sound of her voice had almost hypnotized him into saying it.

"Last night... you said that maybe we drifted apart because we needed to 'figure out who we were without each other,' but I... I don't know who I am without you. And I know, I know that sounds childish, even needy, but honestly, Hermione, who am I without you?"

He finally turned his head to face her, and funnily enough the rain started to fall a little harder, not a downpour by any means, but just hard enough that he couldn't tell whether or not she was crying or if it was just the rain. If he didn't know any better he'd say she made it so just by willing it to be.

She opened her mouth as if to respond, but no words came out, so he continued, "I was without you for half a year, maybe even longer. Even before you left, there was a distance between us, and that was my fault, but Hermione, even when I was with Ginny I was alone, and I _did_ figure out who I was without you... and I didn't like who it was."

He looked back out towards the water and the rain started to pour down even harder, thunder boomed in the distance, and as he turned towards her to suggest going back up to the house, he felt her hands against each side of his face, and before it could even register that she had touched him, he felt a tug, and her wet lips were on his own. It wasn't their first kiss, but in an entirely new sense it was, and however misconstrued his initial feelings of "rightness" had been, this was in a league of "right" all on it's own, and when he saw a streak of lightening over the tops of the mountains, he couldn't find it within himself to care.

End.


End file.
